Facilities

Swingle Hall:

Constructed to house the Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, was completed in 1972. This three-floor building hasapproximately 2,322 square meters of floor space. It houses offices for staff and graduate students, two classrooms, two teaching laboratories, various research laboratories, a publications library, and administrative offices. More…

E. W. Shell Fisheries Center, North Auburn Unit:

Field facilities of the Department are located on a tract of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station approximately 8 kilometers north of thecampus.Approximately 650 hectares of the tract have been set aside primarily for research and teaching in aquaculture, aquatic ecology, and fisheries management. Constructed on the Fisheries Center are 235 earthen ponds comprising approximately 90 hectares of water. The ponds range in size from 0.02 hectare to 8.90 hectares. Water is collected from rainfall on watersheds surrounding the ponds.Located near the ponds are service buildings, equipment storage buildings, shops, feed and fertilizer storage, and a large fish holding/handling building. A fish processing/technology laboratory, the Ireland Center for the study of fishery sciences, a laboratory for research on biochemical genetics, a fish retail sales building for studies on fish marketing, a fish nutrition laboratory and hatchery laboratory also are located at the research station. Most of the ponds are available for various research projects. Several of the ponds are managed as a commercial fish farm. The recently completed Center for Aquatic Resources Management consists of an administration building with more than 20,000 square feet and a 17,000-plus-square-foot laboratory building. The administrative building includes office space for Shell Center staff as well as a teaching lab, a hatchery, a meeting room that will be available to campus and civic groups, a 6,354-square-foot holding area for sorting, weighing and counting fish as needed for research projects and a new market for sales to the public. It also features classrooms and a visitor-friendly reception area. The adjacent laboratory building houses fish tanks and state-of-the-art labs, including several wet labs that have complete climate control and will allow year-round research.

Facilities dedicated to the genetic improvement of fishes are located on the E. W. Shell Fisheries Center, North Auburn Unit. Facilities include 70 earthen ponds with 3.4 ha of water which contain the only government approved outdoor confinement installation for the study of transgenic fish in the United States. A 600 m2 hatchery contains aquaria,fiberglass tanks and incubators for artificially reproducing a variety of fish species. A 600 m2 square foot building for the study of biochemical genetics contains equipment for the classification of fish strains by protein electrophoresis and DNA analysis, and the cloning of recombinant genes for introduction into fish eggs. More…

Facilities also include the 210 m2 Ireland Building laboratory with five outdoor drive-through boat storage bays and the 128 m2 Ireland Center Annex office facility. Field equipment available at the lab includes three Smith-Root shockboats (two of which have been fitted with a larval fish push net; a large boat is suitable for large reservoir work, a small boat is suitable for pond work), a Boston Whaler (one of which has been fitted with a larval fish push net), two large net boats (Kahn and Clark boats), an air boat rigged for electrofishing, several small flat-bottom boats, and all varieties of passive sampling gears (e.g., seines, trap nets, gill nets). The lab equipment includes four dissecting microscopes, two compound microscopes, and an image analysis system that provides state-of-the-art technology for processing larval fish samples, diets, zooplankton samples, and for quantifying daily rings in fish otoliths. A recently-purchased semi-microbomb calorimeter is now available for energetics work. In addition, a nephelometer and a spectrophotometer for analysis of turbidity and chlorophyll-a in pond and reservoir water samples are available. The Annex office facility houses graduate students and technical staff, and includes numerous IBM-compatible computers for data entry and analysis. Ireland Building home page.

E. W. Shell Fisheries Center, South Auburn Unit:

The south Auburn field station includes 36, 0.1 ha earthen ponds and a 465 m2, well-equipped teaching laboratory. The teaching laboratory has indoor and outdoor facilities for housing live fishes.

Fish Biodiversity Laboratory:

This multi-purpose facility located on South College and Woodfield Drive houses offices, research labs, the ichthyology teaching collection, teachings labs and office/lab space for Steve Rider of ADCNR. The teaching facilities take up approximately one quarter of the building and include teaching collection space in a separate, vented room. The Auburn University teaching collection has approximately 1000 lots of specimens from approximately 160 families representative of world fish families, as well as fishes from Alabama and the southeastern United States. There are two teaching labs; one for computer work and one for specimen processing and examination. In addition, the building has storage for field equipment used for ichthyology lab and overnight trips. Office space includes four offices for faculty, staff and students, plus a conference room and GIS workstation. In addition, one office/lab is used by ADCNR personnel. The research labs include wet lab space and a variety of tank sizes, from a large stream tank to arrays of 10, 20, and 40 gallon tanks. An acoustics lab was constructed by Dr. Johnston and her students and is used for work with sound production and hearing in fishes. The facility also includes lab space for processing and temporary storage of fish specimens collected for biodiversity surveys and associated projects More…

Auburn University Shellfish Laboratory:

The Auburn University Shellfish Laboratory is located on Dauphin Island on land leased from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. More…

Disease Lab:

Diagnostic Services Diagnosis of fish diseases are provided to the public and private sectors for a nominal service fee (listed below). Laboratory services include: Bacteriology Virology Molecular Diagnostics Pathology ParasitologyAquatic Animal Health Inspection Aquatic animal health inspection is performed in accordance with the AFS-USFW Blue Book. Turnaround time for all health inspections is 29 days based on requirements for virology testing. Please call in advance to schedule all health inspection requests.Guidelines For Collecting and Shipping SamplesHours of Operation: 7:45 to 4:45 Monday-Friday